The present invention relates to an invalid bed and particularly to one which includes means for assisting an invalid into and out of the bed.
Invalids and particularly parapalegiacs have tremendous difficulty in getting into and out of beds. Either they need assistance from another person or must rely upon their own strength and limited mobility in a time consuming effort to transfer themselves between a wheelchair and the bed.
Some apparatus has been proposed for use in connection with invalid beds, as for example represented in U.S. Pat. Nos. 884,393, 1,505,437, 1,698,754, and 3,077,613. The prior art represented by these patents disclose relatively complicated bed structures made for invalids and in which to some extent trapeze mechanism is provided either for transferring a patient into and out of the bed or providing for exercise of the invalid once in bed. Such structure is complex and necessarily expensive for home use. Also, some of the equipment is so complicated that it still requires a second person to operate, thereby leaving the invalid dependent on other persons. One of the major goals of any rehabilitation program naturally is to help the patient become as independent as possible to improve both his phychological and physiological well-being.